BT to receive windfall after court ruling on call charges

Telecommunications company British Telecom is preparing to receive a multimillion pound windfall from the UK's mobile operators following a Supreme Court ruling over phone call charges.

The UK Supreme Court ruled in favour of BT in the dispute between the company and mobile operators on extra payments for calls to non-geographic numbers such as 0800 and 0845. The court dismissed the appeal by EE, Telefónica, Three and Vodafone.

The companies wanted to block charges for calls made to 0800 and 0845 numbers, stating BT's wholesale interconnect tariffs were unreasonable.

The court ruled that the carriers and related parent companies must make retrospective payments to BT dating back to 2009 when the ladder pricing was introduced. The payments could be up to tens of millions of pounds. However, the exact amount is yet to be decided.

In a company statement, BT said: 'We will now start proceedings to recover the money that has been refunded to the mobile operators since the Court of Appeal ruling.'

It continued: 'We will also be pursuing claims for further termination charges subsequent to that ruling. Such pricing was designed to benefit UK consumers by incentivising the mobile operators to lower their retail prices.'